UNITED STATES
Veteran held hostage
A New York man is accused of holding an 81-year-old Marine Corps veteran hostage in a motel for at least four years to steal his benefits checks. Perry Coniglio, 43, was arrested on Tuesday in his room adjoining the victim’s at a motel in Highlands, New York. The motel is next door to the Hudson Valley town’s police station. Police said Coniglio used brute force and intimidation to get the veteran, who received three checks every month, to cooperate with him. The victim has been taken to a hospital for evaluation. Coniglio was being held in jail on Thursday.
UNITED STATES
New York celebrates Mozart
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is celebrating Mozart with special performances at three subway stations. Yesterday’s performances were to start at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ annual Mostly Mozart Festival. Performances at Fulton Center could be viewed on Facebook Live via Lincoln Center’s Facebook page. The Mostly Mozart Festival is a series of concerts at the Lincoln Center and other New York City venues.
UNITED STATES
Medics charged over selfies
Authorities said two paramedics engaged in a “selfie war” by taking pictures with incapacitated patients. The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office in Florida said in a news release that Kayla Renee Dubois, 24, was arrested on Thursday, and charged with two counts of interception and disclosure of oral communications. Authorities have issued arrest warrants for Christopher Wimmer, 33, on seven counts of the same charge. The release said Wimmer also faces a misdemeanor battery charge for holding open the eyelid of a sedated patient. It said the selfies included 41 patients, three of whom apparently agreed to the photographs.
UNITED STATES
Dark matter remains elusive
Scientists have come up empty-handed in their latest effort to find dark matter — stuff that is theorized to hold galaxies together. For three years scientists have been looking for dark matter nearly 1.6km underground in a former gold mine in South Dakota. They announced on Thursday that despite sensitive equipment working better than expected, they could not find the invisible particles that the Big Bang theory says makes up four-fifths of the universe’s matter. The US$10 million mine project, called the Large Underground Xenon experiment, was one of three places looking for dark matter, along with the International Space Station and Europe’s Large Hadron Collider.
HONG KONG
‘Triad boss’ arrested
An alleged triad boss known as “Shanghai Boy” has been arrested after arriving at Hong Kong International Airport from Thailand, months after he made headlines for being punched in the face at the territory’s most famous luxury hotel. Kwok Wing-hung (郭永鴻) was detained on Thursday night for “conspiracy to commit criminal intimidation, conspiracy to wound with intent and conspiracy to blackmail,” police said in a statement yesterday. Famed for his ever-present 1970s-style sunglasses and swept-forward bowl haircut, Kwok, 58, had dropped off the radar for seven months, local media said. He had been put on a police wanted list and was arrested at the airport by officers from the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau, the South China Morning Post reported.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in